


Material Remains

by luulapants



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Archaeology, Derek Hale has a lot of trauma, Full Shift Derek Hale, Full Shift Hellhound Jordan Parrish, Graduate Student Stiles Stilinski, M/M, Married Derek Hale/Jordan Parrish, Minor Liam Dunbar/Hayden Romero, Polyamory, Pre-Canon Divergence, Stiles Stilinski Doesn't Know About Werewolves, Stiles is awkward AF
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 16:27:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28728081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luulapants/pseuds/luulapants
Summary: Stiles is doing his PhD in Urban Archaeology, and he has the perfect idea for a dig: the old Hale property, the first settlement in Beacon County. He doesn't expect to find a Hale still living there, after the fire that killed almost the whole family. He doesn't expect said Hale to be a gorgeous man married to an equally gorgeous man named Jordan. But what he really doesn't expect are the absolutelyenormousdogs on their property.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Jordan Parrish, Derek Hale/Jordan Parrish/Stiles Stilinski, Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Jordan Parrish/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 115
Kudos: 226





	1. Chapter 1

The first sign along the driveway up to the Hale property read _Private Property – NO TRESPASSERS,_ which was fine, Stiles figured. It wasn’t trespassing if you were coming to see the property owner, announced or unannounced.

The second, maybe twenty feet along, read _NO SOLICITORS_ , and Stiles figured that was fine, too. It wasn’t like he was trying to sell anything. On the contrary, if all of his grant money came through, he might actually be able to offer compensation _to_ the property owner. If it didn’t, then he would be offering nothing but a hopeful smile and a ‘pretty please.’ Considering the amount of grant money he had requested, there honestly wasn’t much difference either way.

The third, another twenty feet in, said _BEWARE OF DOG_.

Beyond that, there were no more signs. Just overgrown forest on either side of the shaded drive. The house was about half a mile in from the road, and it was smaller than he had imagined. The Hale property had once been an enormous estate, he knew. Now all that remained standing was a three-story house with blue clapboard siding, a covered porch, and an attached two-car garage, all new construction. It looked like any number of respectable but not ostentatious houses in Beacon Hills.

The Jeep crawled to a stop. Stiles cut the engine.

He flipped down the visor, looked at himself in the mirror. The air conditioning in the Jeep barely worked, and definitely not for long drives, so there was a noticeable sheen of sweat across his forehead. Stiles wiped a hand over his face, then ran through one more quick rehearsal. “Hi, my name is Stiles Stilinski. I’m doing my PhD in urban archaeology at UC Davis, and I would like your permission to survey some of the remnants of the original estate on this property. Would you mind if I come in to discuss my proposal?”

Easy. Totally doable.

Stiles took a deep breath, opened the door, and stepped out of the Jeep.

And immediately laid eyes on the most enormous dogs he had ever seen.

He yelped and scrambled back up into the Jeep, pulling the door most of the way closed behind him.

They were lying in the shade on the front porch, only their front paws dangling over the lip of the steps and into the blazing sunlight. It was how he’d managed to miss them before – that and gut-wrenching nerves – because both dogs were black and gray, blending into the shadows. One looked like some sort of husky mix, fur dark and fluffy, ears sticking upright as it rested its chin on its front paws. The other had to have been at least part Great Dane, huge and lanky with drooping ears and long jowls. Its short fur was a deep charcoal gray. Even lying down with its head lifted, Stiles imagined that it was waist-height at least. Neither of them had made to get up. The fluffy one hadn’t even moved, but the Great Dane had turned its massive head toward the Jeep and was watching with a sedate sort of curiosity.

“Holy shit,” Stiles muttered, putting a hand over his thundering heart.

Right, they were just dogs. Just really, really big dogs. But they didn’t seem all that interested in attacking him or chasing him off the property.

Slowly climbing back out of the Jeep – though he kept a tight grip on the door, ready to leap back in any moment – Stiles murmured, “Nice dogs? Yeah? Good, friendly, not-man-eating doggos?”

The dogs stared at him.

“I’m just coming by for a visit,” he explained to them in what he hoped was a friendly, non-threatening voice. “Yeah?” He left the Jeep door open – just in case. He crept forward toward the house. “Just gonna walk up and...” Stiles’s words dried up. He swallowed audibly as he realized that, in order to reach the front door, he was going to have to walk up the steps, _right past_ these ridiculous dinosaur-sized dogs. “Just walk up to the front door,” he squeaked.

The closer he got, the bigger they looked. Holy fuck, he didn’t even know dogs _got_ that big. Huskies definitely didn’t. No way. Those had to be horse hybrids or some shit. Didn’t some people breed dogs with wolves to get hybrids? Wolf-dogs? That had to be what the fluffy one was.

When he got to the bottom of the steps, the wolf-dog let out a low, rumbling growl.

Stiles froze.

The Great Dane turned to look at the wolf-dog, then back to Stiles. Slowly, it lifted a massive front paw and placed it on top of the wolf-dog’s head.

It took him a second to interpret the movement. It was like the Great Dane was telling the other one to simmer down. Stiles let out a soft laugh. “Uh, thanks, buddy,” he said. At least someone around here seemed to have the situation under control.

He climbed the steps, staying as far to the opposite side of them as possible. Standing next to the dogs, Stiles had to stop and gape at them for a second. Standing up, the Great Dane would be up to his shoulder, at least. The wolf-dog maybe chest-height.

“Jesus, how much does it cost to feed you two?” he muttered.

The Great Dane made a soft huffing noise.

“Right,” Stiles muttered, “better get to business.” He walked to the front door, uncomfortable to have his back turned to the dogs but sucking it up. This was about something bigger than himself, after all. This was about _finally finishing his fucking doctorate_. He rang the doorbell.

And stood there.

Stiles waited a little longer than what he hoped was a reasonable amount of time, then rang it again.

No answer.

“Fuck,” he muttered, frowning at the door. He’d been so worked up about what to say and how he’d say it and how he needed to not be a goddamn spaz for once in his life. He hadn’t even stopped to worry about there not being anyone home. Or, worse, they were home but were intentionally not answering the door, which meant he had pretty much no chance.

Stiles turned around. “Gyah!” He jumped when he saw the dogs again. For a second, he’d almost forgotten. “Right. They seriously just let you monster dogs run free on the property with no one home? You’re not even wearing collars.” He sighed and glanced around the front yard.

“No chance you could convey a message for me, huh?” he asked the Great Dane. The wolf-dog wasn’t looking at him. Stiles rubbed at the back of his neck. “I didn’t bring anything to write a note with. Would probably be creepy if I, like, scrawled it in the dirt.”

Feeling a bit braver – or maybe more at home with the idea of being eaten alive by dogs – Stiles walked back to the steps and sat down next to the wolf-dog. It seemed to glare at him out of the corner of its eye, but otherwise didn’t move.

“If I pet you, will you bite my hand off? Or my arm? I bet you could get a whole arm in that face.” Stiles lifted a tentative hand over the wolf-dog’s head. Before he could lower it, the Great Dane lowered its head and nosed at his hand. “Oh, you want the pets, huh?” Stiles grinned and reached up to stroke the big dog’s face, then up to rub his ears. He had to reach over his head to do so. “Yeah, you’re the nice one, aren’t you?”

The wolf-dog made a grumbling noise and finally lifted its head. This put it almost face-to-face with Stiles. Its eyes were a sort of hazel-green and fiercely intense.

“Alright, alright,” he agreed. “There’s enough for everyone.” Stiles turned toward them and scratched behind the wolf-dog’s ear with his other hand. “There, you two aren’t so scary.”

Before too long, the wolf-dog lowered its head again, and the Great Dane turned its head away.

Stiles patted the back of its neck affectionately. “Alright. I should get going, I guess. I’ll come back later and leave a note if I have to, so...” He got up and climbed down the stairs. “See you two later!” He waved at the dogs, then walked back to his Jeep.

* * *

  
  


“Hey!” Scott shouted, his face too close to the camera. In the background, Stiles could hear a thumping bass, a discordant sea of voices over the music. “Sorry, it’s really loud! Isaac has people over!” Behind him, the background shifted as he moved through the apartment. A door closed behind him, and the sounds were suddenly cut off, nothing but a muted hum. It looked like he was in the hallway of his apartment building.

Stiles settled back on his bed and raised an eyebrow. “So it looks like Isaac is turning out to be a _pretty_ terrible roommate, huh?”

Scott shook his head. “What? No, it’s fun. He asked first, and his friends are actually pretty cool. We already talked about re-signing the lease for next year.”

Pouting, Stiles pointed at himself. “This is insecure face I’m making right now,” he informed Scott

With a roll of his eyes, Scott immediately recited, “No, I’m not replacing you as my best friend, Stiles. You’re irreplaceable. Isaac is cool, but no one can measure up to your...” He frowned.

“Immeasurable, earth-shattering coolness,” Stiles prompted.

“Yeah, that.” Scott smirked. “Good?”

“I guess.” Stiles picked at a bit of lint on his bed. “But when you move back to NorCal, you and I are totally getting an apartment together, alright?”

Scott glanced to the side and murmured a noncommittal “Mhm,” and Stiles _knew_ , okay? He knew that was because Scott didn’t even know if he wanted to move back to California. He’d gone on two back-to-back study abroad trips in undergrad, and now he had the travel bug. He probably wanted to go, like, make prosthetic legs for elephants or save the pandas or something cute like that. And even if, by some miracle, he didn’t end up globetrotting after finishing vet school, that would probably mean him and Kira would settle down somewhere together and start having adorable babies.

Fuck, their babies were going to be _so cute_.

“Anyway, what’s up?” Scott asked. “How’s the big project going?”

Stiles chewed on a ragged edge on his thumbnail. “Not really up and running yet, but it’ll get there.” Hopefully. All of his back-up plans sucked. “Hey, what do you know about wolf-dogs?”

“Like, hybrids?” Scott asked. “Uh, I know they can be really difficult to take care of. They’re more like wild animals than a regular dog, obviously. They’re not fully domesticated, so the prey drive is pretty much unchecked, and there’s a much higher chance of them attacking humans. You need a special permit to even own one in California. So… please don’t get one.”

Laughing, Stiles shook his head. “Not me. I’m still working on house plants. I think I saw one when I went up to the old Hale property, though. There were two dogs – not both wolf-dogs. One of them looked like a Great Dane. They were _huge_.”

“Did you get a picture?”

“No, I was kind of busy worrying that they’d eat me,” Stiles explained.

“Stiles, we have an _agreement_ ,” Scott lectured. “When you see cute animals, you have to send me pictures. It’s the law!”

“They weren’t cute!” Stiles insisted. “They were terrifying! They were the size of dinosaurs!” He paused and frowned. “Ugh, you probably _would_ think they were cute. They were, like, cuddling together and shit. You’d totally think it’s cute for two monstrous hellbeasts to cuddle.”

Scott nodded in enthusiastic agreement.

The sound of the party picked up again, a shadow moving across Scott’s face, probably from the door. “Hey, the girls are starting up beer pong,” Isaac said, off-camera. “They’re threatening to take our champion title.”

“Oh, boy, that sounds serious,” Stiles commented.

“Yeah, sorry, man,” Scott said. “I gotta go instill some humility in these pretenders.”

Stiles saluted him. “See you later, dude.”

Scott said his goodbye and hung up.

Then it was just Stiles, sitting in his tiny apartment. Alone.

The alone bit was by choice, of course. He’d had a few disastrous roommate experiences and finally decided that a tiny, shitty studio he could barely afford was vastly preferable to giving himself ulcers worrying that the other half of the rent wasn’t going to get paid or that his stuff was going to go missing or that strangers would be invited to crash on their couch for weeks at a time.

And, sure, it sometimes felt like he was tucking himself into a 325-square-foot solitary confinement cell at the end of each day. And, sure, maybe it meant that he drove up to Beacon Hills and haunted his dad’s house a little more than was typical for a man his age. And, yeah, absolutely it made his admittedly dismal social life feel about ten times more dismal than it really needed to.

Stiles had friends. He did. He had Scott and Harley and Heather. Scott at Colorado State. Harley in the Peace Corps in Panama. Heather working for a financial firm in Chicago. He had plenty of friends from undergrad – all of them gone on to new frontiers.

Heaving a sigh, Stiles flopped onto his back and stared at the ceiling. Why in the hell had he decided to stay at Davis for grad school? If he’d gone with Cornell, he at least would have had an excuse for not knowing anybody! (The answer, of course, was money. Plus his unshakable paranoia that his dad would drop dead of a heart attack while he was on the other side of the country.)

His phone buzzed against his chest. Stiles had a fleeting moment of hope that it was Scott, having decided against beer pong, or maybe someone else looking to talk. Instead, he found an email from his adviser with a list of undergrads eligible for hire as research assistants.

Stiles rolled to the edge of his bed to retrieve his laptop and spent a good hour combing through the applications. A lot of sophomores who had only just decided on a major, which meant there was a good chance they would change it again. A lot of them were light on relevant subject matter, too, but it was a small department, so pickings were sure to be slim. In the end, he ended up bookmarking three: Hayden Romero, a junior cultural anthropology major with a minor in botany and non-archaeology field experience; Mason Hewitt, a junior history major with a minor in archaeology and a focus on California history; and Tracy Strauss, a sophomore who had been declared in archaeology since her first semester of freshman year, minoring in folklore.

He would confirm them all with interviews, but there really weren’t any other good candidates. They would have to do. Now all he needed was field work for them to actually _do._

* * *

  
  


When Stiles pulled up in front of the Hale house the next weekend, the porch was totally empty. The first rain of autumn had been making attempts all day, the sky gray and occasionally spitting moisture. That had probably driven the dogs inside, he figured. Stiles actually felt a little disappointed about it, and not only because he had been planning to send Scott pictures. It He grabbed the note he’d scribbled down earlier, explaining his project and providing contact information, and pocketed it before climbing out of the Jeep and heading up the front walkway.

He rang the bell, listening for the sound of barking, but heard nothing. Maybe they’d taken the dogs out with them, then. Stiles pulled the note from his pocket and reached for the storm door, planning to wedge it in there. Just as he pulled it open, the main door opened, too.

Stiles gaped up at the man in the doorway. He honestly hadn’t been expecting anyone to be home, and he definitely hadn’t expected someone so _gorgeous_ to be home. The man had wide, thickly muscled shoulders that tapered down to thick biceps, bared by the tank top he wore. It was a workout tank top, the kind with sleeve holes that went down almost to the hip, which revealed some inhumanly well-defined obliques. Snapping his attention upward didn’t help either, because his face was tan and chiseled, dusted with freckles just below his dazzling green-gold eyes.

The man smiled at him, wide and friendly with two rows of perfectly white teeth. Without even speaking, he gave Stiles the sense that he was nicer than anyone he’d ever met. He pretty much looked like every camp counselor Stiles had ever thought about while jerking off.

“Can I help you?” the man asked.

“Uh,” Stiles said. His hand hung suspended in the air, the paper clutched in it.

The angel-man looked down at it and reached out to take it.

Stiles snatched the paper back and launched into the speech he’d practiced, only at twice the speed and three times the volume. “Hi my name is Stiles Stilinski I’m doing my PhD in urban archaeology at UC Davis I would like to survey some of the estate of the property – I mean, the property of the – the – the, um, the remnants – ”

“Stiles?” the man said, arching an eyebrow at him.

“Yes?” Stiles squeaked.

“Take a breath before you pass out.”

Stiles sucked in a breath, and, yeah, that did feel better. “Sorry, I, um,” he stammered, trying to get his bearings once again. “I wasn’t expecting – you weren’t home before – ” Oh, god, that probably made him sound like some serial trespasser that had been creeping on their property. He held up his hands frantically. “I only mean! I mean, I came by a couple days ago, but you weren’t here, so I was going to leave a note today – I – ” And, for some reason, his brain scrambled for a topic change to end the crushing awkwardness of the moment. “I met your dogs!” he exclaimed.

The man stared at him for a long moment of silence. Then, slowly, as if speaking to someone who might not understand him, he said, “My name is Jordan Parrish. It’s nice to meet you, Stiles.”

If it was possible to die of shame, Stiles would have died a long, long time ago. This wasn’t the most embarrassing thing he’d ever done. He’d be fine. He laughed, a sound that was all nerves, no humor, and looked at his shoes. “Uh, we archaeology nerds are better with dirt than people.”

“It’s fine,” Jordan said, and when Stiles looked up again, he had a different, somehow friendlier smile on his face. Softer this time. “I have to be honest, though – I don’t know how much there is here for an archaeologist. Unless you think we’re on top of dinosaur bones or something.”

“Oh!” Stiles said, finding his feet finally. Because he could have this conversation black-out drunk on the back of a bicycle – actually had. “I’m not that kind of archaeologist. Urban archaeology focuses on the development of cities and human settlements over time, trying to preserve history before it gets built over. Basically, saving archaeologists a thousand years from now a bunch of time.” He gestured behind him toward the sprawl of the property. “This was the first settlement in Beacon County. Before the missions even got this far north.”

Jordan gave him a slow, considering look, then held the door open wider. “Why don’t you come inside? I can get you something to drink while you tell me what you’re looking for.”

Stiles wiped his feet on the front mat, then stepped inside. The front foyer had two sets of stairs, one leading down to the first floor, the other up to the second. He followed Jordan down to the first, which was mostly open concept: a living room area off to one side, kitchen and dining table straight ahead. Through a set of glass doors, Stiles could vaguely make out an office on the other side.

A menacing growl from the living room had him nearly jumping out of his skin. “Gah!” he choked, spinning to face the noise.

There, taking up the majority of a decent-sized couch, was the wolf-dog. The Great Dane was nowhere to be scene.

“Hey!” Jordan had appeared at his side and wagged a finger in the dog’s direction. “Be nice.”

The wolf-dog made a grumbling noise.

“Where’s the other one?” Stiles asked. He trailed after Jordan into the kitchen area, casting nervous glances behind toward the wolf-dog.

Jordan opened the fridge. “Uh, my husband is out with him right now.”

Stiles spared a moment to picture his heart shattering into a million pieces before conceding that he probably should have realized before. There was a silver band on Jordan’s hand, plain as day.

“I’ve got iced tea, lime seltzer, and apple juice,” Jordan told him. “There’s coffee left in the pot, too, but it’s probably cold by now.”

“Uh, iced tea sounds good,” Stiles agreed. He fidgeted, glanced back toward the dog, then sat at the table. “So this dog didn’t want to go with?”

Jordan pulled a pitcher of bright pink tea from the fridge, then got a couple of glasses down from the cabinets. “Are you afraid of dogs?” he asked, sounding amused. He poured out the iced tea.

“It’s just,” Stiles explained, “when I was here before, it kinda seemed like the other one was, like, sixty percent of this one’s self-control.”

He hadn’t expected that to get such an enthusiastic laugh. Jordan actually had to set the pitcher of iced tea down as his whole, beautiful, muscular chest shook with it. “That’s probably accurate,” he conceded, “but don’t worry. He’s all bark and no bite.”

Another soft growl drifted across the room.

“What’s his name?” Stiles asked.

Jordan finished pouring the tea before he answered, casting a glance in the dog’s direction. “Pumpkin,” he said, sounding oddly satisfied with the answer. Which, sure, it was so not the expected name for a dog like that. He should get props for creativity.

“So is he a wolf hybrid or something?” Stiles asked. “He’s huge.”

“Definitely a hybrid, but we’re not sure what percent,” Jordan told him. He brought the glasses to the table and sat down across from Stiles. “He’s a rescue. I found him wandering the property, fed him once, and couldn’t get rid of him after that.”

Pumpkin growled.

“Shush, you,” Jordan called.

Stiles got the odd sense that an inside joke was going on that he wasn’t privy to. People were weird about their dogs, though, he guessed.

“So the project,” Jordan prompted. “I mean, obviously this is _not_ the original Hale house.”

“No, no, I know about the fire,” Stiles assured him.

Jordan glanced toward the living room again, just a flick of his eyes. “The house that burned down wasn’t the original, either. I’m not sure how many times buildings have been torn down and rebuilt on this property, honestly. I’m not sure there’s much for you to look at, history-wise.”

Stiles shook his head. “That’s exactly why I’d find something. Tear-downs and rebuilds like that – they usually just plow the old building down and let nature grow over the ruins. There’s old outbuildings on this property – here, let me show you.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and pulled up a couple of the aerial photos he’d been looking at, from the past few decades. “See,” he said as he set his phone on the table and zoomed in. “Like, right here there’s a structure visible through the trees. And then over here...” He dragged the image.

“I know that one,” Jordan said, surprised. “It’s the frame of an old shed or something. It’s near one of the walking paths behind the garden.”

“That’s the sort of stuff I’d be looking for,” Stiles told him. “The Hales were the seat of power in the county for hundreds of years. Digging through the history of this place, it’ll tell us the history of the whole area.” He looked up and saw a subtle frown on Jordan’s face, like he was thinking of reasons not to agree. Stiles immediately launched into his defense. “We wouldn’t be doing any major excavations – not unless we found something crazy and got your permission first. Most likely, it would be surface-level searches, and we’ll be careful not to damage the environment. Anything we find is yours. I might take things back to the lab for cleaning or inspection, but you would have a full record of anything removed from the property, and everything will get returned. I just need photos of artifacts for my dissertation. That’s it.”

Jordan’s expression softened, considering. “When you say ‘we...’” he prompted.

“A couple of undergrads,” Stiles filled in quickly. “Research assistants, and they’d never be here without me. As far as timing goes, that would totally be up to you. If you don’t want us here when you’re gone – or if you _only_ want us here when you’re gone. Whatever you want. We’ll stay out of your hair as much as possible.”

Looking past Stiles, Jordan rested his chin in his hand, thoughtful.

Not sure what else to do with his anxious hands, Stiles gulped at his iced tea too quickly. It wasn’t sweetened, he didn’t think, and had a tart citrus flavor.

“I’ll run it by my husband,” Jordan told him. He picked up his own iced tea and took a sip. “It’s his family’s property, his history.”

Stiles gaped at him. “Wait, your husband is a _Hale_?” And, okay, maybe it wasn’t the smoothest way to approach the subject of ‘holy shit you’re married to the remnants of a collapsed dynasty.’

Jordan nodded. He wasn’t looking at Stiles, though, gaze off toward the living room. “Derek can be a little…” His mouth twisted, and he seemed to be weighing his words very carefully. His eyes found Stiles finally. “Well, family can be a tough subject for him.”

“Right,” Stiles said, because, yeah, having your entire family burned alive would have that effect. “Well, I...” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “If it helps… I mean, we can disregard any recent artifacts. Anything from the past few decades. That’s...” He imagined how he would feel, someone digging in _his_ back yard and finding remnants of his mother to stare at under a microscope. He liked to think he was fairly well-adjusted about her death this far out, but the thought sent the tiniest pang of grief through him. “That’s not history,” he summarized. “That’s his life.”

Something cold touched his upper arm. Stiles turned and found himself face-to-face – literally – with Pumpkin. The dog was tall enough to come up to his shoulder while he was sitting. He nearly fell out of his chair, flailing back and gasping, “Holy shit!”

The dog didn’t react to his movements, just stared at him.

Jordan folded his arms on the table and leaned forward. “You like him, Pumpkin?”

Pumpkin made a huffing noise that puffed hot air over Stiles’s arm.

Stiles gave a nervous laugh and reached out for the dog, sliding his hand behind his ear like he had before. “Uh, I might have given your dogs some scritches when I was here before,” he explained. “He probably thinks I’m rude for not offering more yet.”

“Probably,” Jordan agreed, smiling. God, that was an unfairly beautiful smile. Stiles knew it was probably some great cosmic karma that someone who went through the tragedy of losing his whole family ended up with this ludicrous angel man, but he couldn’t help but feel a little resentful.

His fingers had stilled, and Pumpkin bumped his nose into Stiles’s side. Hard.

Scratching at Pumpkin’s neck with one hand, Stiles fished his note back out of his pocket. “Um, here, my contact information is all written down here. If you or your husband have any other questions about the project or want to set any other ground rules… I mean, I kinda set my whole budget toward a local dig, so I’ll pretty much agree to anything at this point. You want a shirtless college boys excavation team, you got it.”

Oh god, why did he say that?

“Oh, god, why did I say that?”

Jordan had a hand over his mouth, shoulders shaking. Pumpkin had turned to look at him.

“I’m so sorry. It’s, um, you know, caffeine?” He pointed at the tea. His words came in a frantic babble. “Makes me run my mouth like a lunatic. Don’t listen to me. Well, about the excavation, yes. Please listen about that. Everything else, just…” Stiles choked out a nervous little laugh. “I’m gonna get out of your hair,” he decided, getting up from the table.

“It’s herbal tea,” Jordan told him.

Stiles gaped at him, betrayed. “Let me have an excuse, man!”

Jordan started laughing again, harder this time and without the decency to cover his mouth. He got up, though, Pumpkin immediately falling in at his side. “It was nice meeting you, Stiles. I’ll let you know soon once we’ve had a chance to discuss.”

He and Pumpkin walked Stiles to the door. It had started to drizzle again, so Stiles had an excuse for a quick getaway to his Jeep. When he got in and looked back at the house, Jordan was crouched on the porch, one arm wrapped around the dog. He waved as Stiles backed off down the driveway.

* * *

  
  


After a quick stop at the new Indian place down the street, Stiles pulled into the parking lot of the Beacon Hill Sheriff’s Department. The city had changed a lot since Stiles first left for Davis, but this place always stayed the same. He was pretty sure the computers were still running the same software they’d been running when he was in middle school.

A few of the deputies had come and gone over the years, but he came back often enough to know everyone’s names at least. He waved at Tara at the front desk and asked about her kids before heading back toward his dad’s office, takeout bag slung over one arm. There were a few deputies working at their desks, one taking a statement from a red-haired woman who –

Stiles paused.

Took a couple of steps back.

Turned around.

“Lydia?” he asked, shocked. She didn’t look much different than she had when he’d last seen her – a house party here in Beacon Hills, between their freshman and sophomore years of college. Her hair was still perfect, cascading shimmering red over her shoulder. Her makeup was still subtle and impeccable, lips a soft rosy pink. Her clothes should have looked casual, even sloppy – a tank top with a wide-scooped neck and a pair of athletic shorts – but she wore them like she was showcasing them in a fashion catalog.

Lydia looked him over in a slow assessment. “Nice to see you, Stiles,” she said, curt.

They didn’t actually know each other that well. Other than Stiles being disgustingly in love with her for most of their public school education. And a truly horrendous confession of said love while drunk at the homecoming bonfire their senior year. And a cold but diplomatic rejection of said love confession, followed by a scathing psychoanalysis of the possible reasons someone might obsessively direct all of their romantic attention at a person who they knew would not reciprocate it.

And, finally, a knowing smile she had given him from across the room at that last house party, when she saw him drunkenly making out with Danny Mahealani.

These subtle dynamics of their history came back to him slowly as he fished for something appropriate to say to her. His mouth decided on: “Did you get arrested?”

Lydia rolled her eyes. “No, Stiles,” she snapped. “I’m here filing a police report – a report which you are interrupting, by the way.”

Deputy Morris looked over her shoulder at him. “She’s right, you know.”

“I was just checking,” Stiles insisted. “You know, if you were arrested, I’ve got some pull here, so – ”

“He doesn’t,” Morris said, turning back to Lydia. “He has no pull here. I might actually arrest you just because he seems to like you.”

“I wouldn’t blame you,” Lydia assured her. She paused, then looked up at Stiles. “Leave now.”

“Right,” Stiles agreed. He gave them a salute – oh god, why would he _salute_? – and disappeared himself into the relative safety of his dad’s office.

His dad was hunched over his laptop, reading glasses perched on his nose, frowning at whatever he was working on. “You think you can hide the vegetarian food in all the spices,” he said.

“What?”

He looked up and pointed at the take-out bag. “The Indian food. You think I won’t notice there’s no meat in it because it’s spicy.”

“You like Indian!” Stiles insisted.

“Did you at least get samosas?”

Stiles clutched the bag against his chest. “Well, I got some for me, but I guess I’d be willing to share.”

“Good, then I’m willing to share my home with you tonight,” his dad said. “Again.”

Stiles sat down on the opposite side of the desk and started taking the food out. “Did you know Lydia Martin is out there?” he asked.

“Mhm, and no I’m not going to tell you what she’s here for.”

“Can you at least tell me why the hell she’s in Beacon Hills?” Stiles pressed. “Last I heard she was killing lesser nerds with her brain at MIT.”

His dad finally set his laptop aside and reached for a samosa. The biggest one. “Her mom was diagnosed with breast cancer this summer,” he said. “I assume she’s in town to help out.”

Stiles had his mouth full of paneer and curry as he spoke. “Oh shit. How bad is it – I mean, is she gonna be okay?”

“I know she’s been going to the county hospital for chemo,” his dad said as he cut into his food, “and that’s all the Lydia Martin-related intel I have for you. Honestly, I’m surprised you’re so curious.” He squinted at Stiles. “Are you sure you don’t like women? You know, you _are_ allowed to like both. They talked about it on _The View_.”

“Oh my god,” Stiles mumbled, rubbing at his face. The spice level on the curry was more than he’d expected, and sniffled as his nose started to run. “Yes, dad, I’m sure. Please stop using Whoopi Goldberg as your primary news source.”

His dad frowned at him as he ate a bite. “It’s just… you haven’t mentioned being interested in anyone lately,” he pointed out.

Stiles scoffed. “Sure I have. There was…” He squinted into the middle distance and shoved a piece of paneer into his face. The only person he’d slept with recently was his ex – at least six times now since Stiles first told him that he never wanted to see his stupid face again – and he was pretty sure his dad’s Theo policy was ‘shoot on sight.’ He squirmed. “Okay, so maybe I’ve been busy,” he relented. “Maybe there hasn’t really been anyone.” Then, to himself, he muttered, “No one that isn’t married anyway.”

“ _What_?”

Rolling his eyes, Stiles waved a fork at his dad. “Relax. I just sort of drooled over a guy today before realizing that he was _very_ married, and embarrassed myself horrifically. Standard fare, really.”

His dad rolled his eyes and finally reached for the container of baingan bharta. “Kid, if you’re gonna be hanging around town with this project of yours, I want you to promise you won’t cause a scandal.”

Stiles’s eyes latched onto his dad, sharp and accusing. “Why? Worried about reelection?”

“There won’t be any reelection,” the sheriff sighed.

“Then why does it matter?”

“For the last time, I _am_ going to retire, Stiles. I don’t need a campaign on the horizon to care that you’re not causing domestic disturbances in my county.” He waggled his fork at Stiles.

Giving up the argument, Stiles heaved a sigh and sniffled at his food. “Don’t worry. There is absolutely no chance it’ll go anywhere.”

* * *

  
  


After an excruciating two days of waiting, Stiles received an email:

_JEParrish@gmail.com_

_Hi Stiles,_

_It was nice meeting you the other day. Derek and I have talked it over, and we would be happy to host your survey. He’s actually excited to see if he can learn more about his family history. There are a few extra conditions we’ll need you to agree to, though:_

  * _Items would only be taken off the property with our permission (you would text us a picture of whatever you find and asking for the OK)_

  * _Like we discussed, anything from the house that burned down in ‘02 is off-limits_

  * _Send us a schedule of when and where you will be on the property at least a week in advance_

  * _Attached is a schedule of dates when we won’t want to have anyone on the property_




_Let me know when you would want to start. We can set up a time to show you around the property before you get started._

_Talk to you soon,_

_Jordan Parrish_

Stiles opened the attachment and scanned through the calendar. It covered the entire fall semester and into December. There were a few days per month marked off, he assumed either times that they would be out of town or would have company. Most of the schedule was wide open, though.

He let out a sigh of relief, then leaned back in his chair and punched the air in triumph.

About ten seconds after his private celebration, he sent out emails to his prospective research assistants to schedule interviews.

* * *

  
  


Hayden arrived in the parking lot first – well, first of the undergrads. Stiles had been there for an hour, packing and loading their gear into the Jeep. He looked up as her beat-up red Toyota rolled to a stop one space over from him.

“I hope you packed light!” he called. “We’re going to have a full car this first trip.”

A lot of the equipment was their tents and dig equipment. Jordan had graciously agreed to keep their more expensive items in the shed so they wouldn’t have to lug it back and forth for every trip.

Hayden opened the trunk and produced a single duffel bag, plus a sleeping bag in a small stuff-sack. “How’s this for light?”

“Awesome,” he agreed, climbing onto the back bumper. “Hand me the duffel – there’s a spot for it up top.” She passed it up, and he strapped it down onto the roof.

“Did you get this car just for digs?” she asked, giving it a once-over.

“Nope, Roscoe and I have been together a long time,” he said, patting the roof affectionately. “Let me tell you, we have some _pretty_ wild memories together.”

Hayden pursed her lips and lifted an eyebrow at him, but said nothing. Quiet judgment. He could work with that. Better than the loud judgment that he often found directed his way.

The next car was a blue pickup truck with _GO AGS!!!!!!!_ written on the side in gold paint with a crude drawing of what might have been a horse on the back window. Stiles squinted at the car as it pulled in on the other side of the Jeep, because neither Tracy or Mason gave off ‘school spirit’ vibes to him.

The passenger door opened, and Mason stepped down. A moment later, a guy with slicked-back brown hair and wide shoulders was coming around the back, saying, “It’s been sticking – let me get it,” as he reached for the tailgate. Mason paused to wave at Stiles and Hayden before going to help with his bags.

From just behind Stiles, Hayden said, “Liam?”

The brown-haired boy froze, looking up in their direction with wide, panicked eyes. “Uhh. Hayden. I, uh, what’re you – ” He slipped and fell off the tailgate. “I thought you were doing sociology.”

Stiles sensed the drama immediately. He turned around, leaning against the back of the Jeep for a better view of the interaction.

Mason seemed to be ignoring them, moving past Liam to unload his bags.

Hayden rolled her eyes. “Anthropology,” she corrected. “And I assume you’re still majoring in blow-off jock classes?”

Ooh, spicy. Stiles pressed the side of his fist to his mouth as he looked to Liam for a response.

Liam rubbed his hip where it had struck the tailgate when he fell. “I’m doing managerial economics,” he muttered, scowling.

“ _Wow_ ,” Hayden said. Stiles had never heard a single word sound so deeply, undeniably _mean_ in his life. He could really only stare at her in awe.

“Hey,” Liam protested, “what’s wrong with manag – ?”

Mason cut in loudly: “Alright!” He clapped a hand on Liam’s shoulder. He’d finished unloading his bags, apparently. “I’m officially putting this conversation out of its misery.”

“Nooo,” Stiles whined.

Everyone turned to look at him, and Stiles abruptly remembered that this was real life and not a soap opera he’d accidentally gotten emotionally invested in while sitting in a doctor’s waiting room.

“I mean…” He cleared his throat. “Nice to meet you.”

Tracy pulled into the parking lot. Thank god.

* * *

  
  


Stiles’s phone buzzed on the center console, Jordan’s name appearing on the screen. He grabbed it and started to swipe the accept icon before noticing Tracy’s look of concern from the passenger seat. “I’m watching the road, I swear,” he told her. He accepted the call and held the phone to his ear. “Hey, we’re en route, about an hour away.”

“Shoot,” Jordan said, and Stiles felt dread settle into his chest.

“No, don’t say ‘shoot,’” he protested.

“No, it’s fine,” Jordan assured him. “It’s just I’m not going to be there. I just got an emergency call for work. I’m literally on my way to the airport right now.”

“Shoot,” Stiles said. He sighed and glanced in the rear view at the piles and piles of crap they had in the trunk. If they couldn’t get into the shed to lock their stuff up, they’d have to schlep everything back with them. Plus, he hadn’t gotten any sort of tour of the property yet. “I mean, we can still get out there and get set up, right? What about Derek – will he be around?”

There was a pause on the line, and for a moment Stiles worried that the call had cut out. Then Jordan said, “He’s not home right now, but I’ll see if he can get be there to meet you. If not, you guys can go ahead and start setting up. I’m really sorry about this.”

“Hey, not your fault. I hope it’s nothing serious.” Jordan had never actually mentioned what he did for a living. Considering how he and Derek lived in the middle of no where and no one in the town of Beacon Hills knew them, he’d assumed they were wealthy hermits.

Jordan gave a soft laugh. “I’m a consultant in explosives forensics.”

“So definitely something serious,” Stiles surmised. “Okay, well don’t worry about us, alright? We’ll muddle our way through.”

“Thanks, Stiles. Talk to you later.”

* * *

  
  


An hour and thirty minutes later, Stiles was nearly frightened to death by one of the most attractive men he had ever seen in his life.

No one was home when they arrived on the property, so they started the long and exhausting process of hauling their equipment into the forest behind the house. Stiles had picked a clearing, about a quarter mile past the current property, that would give them easy access to the old structures that Stiles knew about already.

He and Mason were nailing down tent stakes when Stiles glanced up, down, and then double-took when he processed that there was a man standing at the edge of the clearing, _glaring_ at them. With an undignified yelp, he stumbled back and fell on his ass.

The man, who Stiles realized a few seconds too late was probably Derek Hale, was every bit as gorgeous as Jordan but in an entirely different way.

(Well, no, that wasn’t true. The bulging, glorious muscles way was very much the same.)

Where Jordan was bright smiles and sandy brown hair, tan skin and friendly eyes that crinkled in the corners when he laughed, Derek was dark, intense. He seemed too pale in the bright morning sun that glared down through the opening in the trees. He had dark hair, thick eyebrows, and a menacing sort of presence about him. And apparently he hadn’t gotten the memo about it still being summer – he wore jeans, boots, and a black long-sleeve t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

“Uh, hey,” Stiles laughed, getting back up and dusting the dirt off his butt. “Derek? Are you Derek?”

Derek jerked his head up and down once. He didn’t move.

Okay, so apparently Jordan had full custody of all people skills in their marriage. Stiles reminded himself that the one thing he _did_ know about Derek was that his whole family burned alive. That was the sort of trauma that might result in a grumpy, antisocial disposition, he supposed.

Stiles crossed the clearing, figuring he would be doing the literal and metaphorical legwork in this conversation. “I’m Stiles.” He held out a hand to shake.

“I know,” Derek said, and even his voice was dark and intimidating. He didn't shake.

“Right,” he agreed, and, oh god, Stiles was _so_ not equipped to manage the normal operations of a conversation under these conditions. Other people kept _him_ on-track, not the other way around! He withdrew his hand. “Uh, this is my team. That’s Mason over there. The two hauling boxes are Tracy and Hayden. Tracy’s the one with the braid.”

Derek’s eyes moved up, scanning the beginnings of their little campsite without so much as a single tic of a facial muscle. His massive shoulders were high and tense. Stiles watched him and noticed that Derek’s chest was rising and falling rapidly. Looking back up at his face, the hard set of his eyes, the clench of his jaw, Stiles realized what this standoffish behavior might actually be:

Panic.

“Uh, Jordan said we should just get started getting set up,” he explained, “since you might not get here in time. We can totally stop if you’re ready to take us around now, though.”

Derek’s throat constricted visibly, but he didn’t look at Stiles, his eyes still fixed on the others.

“Or if you have other stuff you need to do first, feel free to come get us later. We’ve got plenty to keep us busy getting set up.”

Finally, Derek looked at him again. “There’s not much to see,” he said gruffly. His eyes flicked back in the direction of the girls and Mason.

Stiles couldn’t decide if he was freaking out over having people on his family’s land, ready to dig up his history, or maybe if it was just social anxiety. He figured he could do something about the second. “How about… would it make more sense if you just showed me around real quick and the others can keep setting up?”

“Yes,” Derek said, too quickly and with a slight edge of relief.

“Okay,” Stiles agreed, nodding. He tried to keep his tone soft and placating. The whole dark and brooding vibe had pretty much vanished, and now Derek looked like nothing so much as a spooked deer. A very big, strong spooked deer. “I’ll be right back, then.”

He darted back toward camp, conferring quickly with the undergrads to make sure they knew what their next tasks were. Then he grabbed his notebook with the maps inside and returned to Derek.

If he had expected some sort of guided speaking tour to start with, it didn’t take long for that notion to be quashed. Derek was downright silent as they trekked away from the campsite, toward one of the structures Stiles had on his map, the one Jordan had recognized. Derek stopped a few yards away from it, just staring at the rusting iron frame as if waiting for it to introduce itself.

“Uh,” said Stiles, flipping open his notebook and unclipping his pen. “Any idea what this was? Jordan thought a shed maybe?”

“Greenhouse,” Derek said.

His certainty caught Stiles by surprise. “Oh,” he said, “Um, was it… I mean, was it in use before… I mean, when you were a kid?” If so, that meant it was off-limits.

Derek shook his head. “There’s glass,” he said, pointing at the structure, “inside.”

Stiles sighed in relief. “Got it. If there are any… I mean, I already marked off the foundation of the last house, so we won’t go near that, but if there are any other structures that were standing when you lived here, just let me know and we’ll steer clear, yeah?”

For a long moment, Derek just stared at him, brow furrowed. Then he jerked his head in agreement, turned, and started walking off in another direction, leaving Stiles to scramble after him.

They didn’t walk the whole property – that would have taken hours – but Derek showed him a few sites worth looking at: places where chimneys still stood in dilapidated piles of bricks, an old well, a stone foundation half-sunk in the dirt. Stiles dutifully marked them each down on his maps with notes of his initial observations.

After about an hour, Derek stopped in the middle of a copse of birch trees and turned to squint at Stiles. “What are you looking for?”

Stiles frowned at the question. “Old stuff?” he said with a laugh. Derek didn’t laugh with him. Stiles hesitated, then added, “I guess, just evidence that shows us the growth and progress of this place. A window into how people lived, how Beacon Hills was founded and how it developed. And, you know, hopefully something unique.” He felt his words rushing faster, hands moving animatedly as he slipped into the nerd-zone that was always bubbling just below the surface when he talked archaeology. “The Hales – your ancestors, I guess – they were this crazy anomaly in this region. The Spanish missions didn’t even come this far inland. This was fully indigenous territory, and the Hales just sort of _appeared_ out here out of nowhere. An English family in Northern California, literally a hundred years before any other Europeans were living out here. That’s…”

He realized, belatedly, that Derek was staring at him with both eyebrows lifted high.

“Sorry,” Stiles said, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I’ve kinda been geeking on this.”

“There’s one more spot,” Derek told him, then set off into the trees again.

At first, the last spot didn’t look any different than the rest of the forest. Then Derek bent down and moved some debris aside to reveal a flat, weather-worn piece of wood.

Stiles came closer and crouched down beside it, brushing his fingers over the wood to feel for the edges. His hand bumped into something hard and metallic. Moving more debris aside, he found a circular handle. His eyes went wide as he looked up at Derek. “Is there something below here?” he asked. “A root cellar or something?”

Derek nodded. “I think it’s caved in,” he explained. “I don’t know if you have the right equipment.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Stiles assured him, beaming and not even trying to hide his excitement. The way Derek was watching him, shy but also looking a bit pleased with himself, it made Stiles feel like he’d passed some sort of test, and the cellar was his reward.

“You should get back to your team,” Derek told him.

Stiles stood back up, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Right. Well, thanks for showing me around. Feel free to come check in on us if you want. Or just pretend we’re not here.”

“Are any of them afraid of dogs?” Derek asked.

“I don’t think so,” Stiles told him. “Although, your dogs are big enough to make anyone nervous at first.” He laughed.

For a moment, Derek looked like he might just walk away. Instead he said, “They might… roam around.”

Stiles nodded, smiling encouragingly. “Totally fine. I met them, they’re totally friendly. I think Pumpkin likes me.”

Derek looked down at his shoes and said nothing. Then, abruptly, he said, “Bye,” and turned around. He left.

Staring after him, Stiles couldn’t help but wonder at the strange dynamic that must exist between Derek and Jordan. He desperately wanted to see the two of them together – even if he resented both of them, a little bit, for taking the other off the market.

Stiles cast another glance back at the cellar door and frowned as the midday sun glinted off something in the forest debris. He frowned and walked back over to investigate. A little piece of metal was just barely poking out of a clod of dirt. Very delicately, he pressed at the dirt, easing it away.

It was a necklace, tarnished silver on a long chain. It was hard to see through the caked dirt, but the figure on the face of it looked a bit like a wolf.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles struggles with the dynamic between himself, Jordan, and Derek.

Derek didn’t make another appearance that weekend, but the wolf-dog did wander through on a few occasions. There was no sign of the Great Dane. At first, Pumpkin stayed off to the edges of wherever they were working, half-hidden in the greenery. Stiles would catch a bit of movement out of the corner of his eye, and there he was: just standing there, staring.

“We’re on his territory,” Tracy commented. “He’s just checking us out, seeing if we’re cool.”

“Seeing if we’re easy prey is more like it,” Hayden muttered.

Saturday, they were cataloging flora in and around the old greenhouse when Stiles finally looked over at the dog and called, “Pumpkin, you want some pets?”

Pumpkin stared at him, assessing.

Stiles sat down on the ground, legs sprawled in front of him, hoping to make a less imposing figure of himself. He regretted it when Pumpkin did decide to come closer, and Stiles remembered that the dog was _enormous_ and towered over him while he was sitting down. He patted the dog’s side as he shifted up to stand on his knees for a better height.

“There you go. Good boy, Pumpkin.” He scratched behind his ears, down to the thick fur on the sides of his neck.

Pumpkin made a sudden move, jolting forward against Stiles and knocking him backward.

“Sorry,” Tracy said in a near-whisper.

Stiles glanced over and saw her and Mason standing a few feet back.

“Didn’t mean to spook you, buddy,” she said, holding her hands out in a placating gesture.

“They’re okay, bud,” Stiles assured him. He got slowly to his feet, watching for any sign that him getting up would scare him off. When it didn’t, Stiles walked back to stand next to the others. “See? I’m vouching for these two. They’re great.” He slung an arm over Mason’s shoulders. “This one snores kind of loud, but – ”

Mason elbowed him. “I told you, _you_ were snoring. You woke yourself up.”

Pumpkin approached slowly, ears pressed back and tail held stiff and low.

“Oh my god, he’s _huge,”_ Tracy laughed as he came closer. Pumpkin was easily chest-height for her.

Hayden called from her spot in the greenhouse: “If you three get eaten, I’m taking the Jeep back to campus!”

The dog turned toward her and made a huffing noise. Seemingly emboldened by her derisive tone, he took the final step and pressed his head against Tracy’s outstretched hand.

“Hey, there you go,” Stiles praised. “See, now you’ve got tons of hands to give you scritches.” He rubbed his own over the thick fur on Pumpkin’s shoulder.

Mason let Pumpkin sniff his hand before attempting to join in on the pets-fest. “Are you sure this is a wolf _hybrid_?” he asked. “I don’t see a whole lot of dog going on here.”

Pumpkin listed to the side against him, nearly knocking Mason over.

Stiles snorted. “If he was a full wolf, we would _definitely_ have been eaten. This guy’s too much of a sweetheart to be a full-on wild animal. Look at that face!” Stiles scratched up to the top of Pumpkin’s head, and Pumpkin’s eyes slid shut in satisfaction.

“Not that this isn’t adorable,” Hayden called, “but we have like fifty bajillion samples over here, and I can’t take them all myself.”

“Sorry,” Stiles sighed, taking a half-step away. “Sorry, you’re right.” He patted Pumpkin’s side. “You stick around if you like, alright?”

He did hang around for a bit, lying in the moss a few yards away. Then Stiles got caught up in their work. The next time he looked up, Pumpkin had disappared.

* * *

  
  


The sleep pad creaked underneath Stiles as he squirmed and shifted in his unzipped sleeping bag. “Oh my god, I _hate_ camping,” he muttered.

“You might be in the wrong line of work, then,” Mason commented.

The night air around them was still and cool, a soft chorus of frogs drifting up from the south, where a steeply cliff-lined creek bisected the property. Through the thin fabric of their tent, Stiles could see the glow of a battery lantern in the girls’ tent.

“This is why I went into _urban_ archaeology,” Stiles explained. “If I had half-decent funding, we’d be in a motel at least. As it is, I blew all my grant money hiring you three.”

Mason snorted. “If the peanuts you’re paying us blew your whole grant, that was one _shitty_ grant.”

“Right?” Stiles pushed up onto his elbow. He and Mason had turned their light off already, but he could just make out the outline of his figure in the shadows on the other side of the tent. “And I could have been staying at my dad’s, but then I’d have nowhere to put the three of you. God, we’re just lucky that Jordan and Derek didn’t ask us to compensate them.”

“Mm, I wouldn’t mind compensating Derek,” Mason said under his breath.

Stiles snorted and poked a leg out of his sleeping bag to kick him. “Dude.”

“What? I’m _right_.”

“You are,” Stiles sighed.

“Is his husband hot, too?” Mason asked.

A voice drifted across the small gap between the tents. Hayden. “Wait, are you talking about what a babe the property owner is?”

“Not you too,” Stiles griped. “Tracy? You gonna join on the thirst train?”

“I’m not even into dudes,” she said, “but yeah. Full-on hottie.”

“So Jordan?” Hayden prompted. “Also hot?”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “You sure we shouldn’t be talking about Mason’s jock friend? What was his name?”

Mason barked a laugh. From the other tent, Stiles heard the shuffling of sleeping bags, and then the lantern clicked off. “Goodnight!” Hayden called loudly.

* * *

  
  


Sunday, Pumpkin showed up early and lurked nearby while they continued their work on the greenhouse. They had taken the plant samples before they began gridding – partly because they didn’t want to trample anything while marking off their grids, partly because they figured that natural growth spreading would render exact locations meaningless, but mostly because Hayden was pretty sure she could use some equipment in the botany lab next week to identify their samples.

“Eight feet, nine inches,” Mason called from the other side of the measuring tape.

“Got it,” Tracy said. She sat in the dirt a few feet away from pumpkin, marking down their measurements on graph paper. Stiles had been relieved to discover she actually knew what the hell she was doing when it came to preparing a dig site.

Hayden carefully ran a string from the stake near Stiles to the one Mason had stopped at. “This is literally the worst,” she declared again. “Anthro field work is just like… talking to people and taking notes and shit, not _geometry_.”

“Ugh, people,” Stiles scoffed. “You anthro freaks can keep your human communication. Dead people only, right Tracy?”

Without looking up from her notebook, Tracy held her pen aloft and declared, “Dead people only!”

“There had better not be any dead _anything_ in this dig,” Mason insisted, pulling the measuring tape out to the next stake. “If we accidentally dig up a pet cemetery or something, I’m gonna barf.”

Pumpkin made a rumbling noise low in his throat. Stiles looked over and saw that he’d lifted his head, ears perked up and rotating like little satellite dishes. In another second, he had jumped to his feet and sprinted off in the direction of the house.

“Maybe he heard a squirrel,” Tracy suggested.

Stiles had another hunch, though. One that proved right when, about twenty minutes later, he saw Jordan heading toward them through the trees, Pumpkin close at his heel. “Hey, how’s it going?” he called. “Is it alright if I come over? I don’t want to step on anything important.”

“You’re fine as long as you stay outside the ropes,” Stiles assured him. He finished wrapping a stake, then brushed his legs off and walked over.

Jordan had obviously just gotten home and hadn’t changed yet. He wore a pair of black slacks and a white button-up shirt, which he’d unbuttoned down to the top of his chest. The sleeves were rolled up over his beautiful, perfectly toned forearms. Stiles recalled wanting to see Jordan and Derek interact, but he realized now that such an encounter was a terrible idea. Seeing that much hunk-ness together in one place would absolutely explode his brain.

“Uh, how was your work thing?” he asked, trying for ‘normal human conversation,’ if only to see what it felt like for once. “Disaster averted?”

“I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you,” Jordan said. He winked. _Winked_. Stiles was pretty sure that was cheating. He was also pretty sure his awkward little laugh gave him away completely, if the pitying look on Tracy’s face was any metric. Jordan glanced at the undergrads expectantly.

“Oh!” Stiles blurted, fumbling. “Uh, yeah, this is the crew.” He pointed them out. “Mason is the local history buff, Tracy is the archaeology native, and Hayden is our token anthropologist.”

“Hey,” Hayden complained.

Jordan smirked. “I’ll just pretend I understand the intricate dramas of the archaeology community.”

“Probably best,” Mason advised.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you all,” Jordan greeted. “I’m Jordan. You already met my husband, I guess.”

Hayden mumbled, “Not really,” just as Tracy murmured, “Sort of,” and Stiles shot them both a warning look. God, _he_ was supposed to be the socially inept one here.

Pumpkin, who had been standing quietly at Jordan’s side, began to pull away, but Jordan slid a hand over the back of his neck and pulled him in close and stroking just behind his ear. Maybe a self-comforting gesture, embarrassed about Derek’s anti-social behavior. “I, um,” he said, cheerful expression faltering, and Stiles once again found himself wondering how someone as friendly and outgoing as Jordan had ended up with someone as shy as Derek. “I was going to show you the shed where you can store everything?”

Stiles nodded, glad for the change in topic. “Yeah, that’d be great.” He called back to the others, “Finish up the grid, and then we can head back, alright?”

Jordan turned, keeping a hand on Pumpkin, and lead the way back toward the house.

“Sorry,” Stiles offered. “They’re rude.”

“Kids,” Jordan dismissed, but the lightness of his voice seemed forced.

“Derek was really nice,” Stiles assured him. “He was great showing me around, gave me a bunch of good ideas for where to get started.”

“I think he’s excited about the project now that he’s gotten used to the idea,” Jordan told him. “Getting some new information about his family history and all of that.”

Stiles nodded. “Yeah. You, um, you mentioned. In your email.” God, he felt so fucking awkward.

Jordan gestured ahead of them toward a small red building behind the main house. “There’s the shed. The lock’s a little tricky – let me show you.” So he did. It was a small, cramped space with a lawnmower and other yard tools taking up most of the space. Jordan had cleared a shelf near the front for them. Stiles stood next to it in the dark of the shed, Jordan just outside and blinking in the blinding noon sun. He had a hand buried in the fur between Pumpkin’s shoulder blades.

He didn’t know why it felt so important to break the tension, but Stiles found himself craving the easy smile he’d gotten when he first met Jordan, hated the quietly restrained one that had taken its place. Tracing a hand over the empty shelf, Stiles said, “I got the sense that Derek has a hard time with people,” he offered. “Or new people, at least.”

“Yeah,” Jordan said quietly. “That’s true.”

“I get it,” Stiles told him. “I mean, living in a town where everyone knows your family name for a reason like _that_. I don’t think I’d like being around people much either.”

And, fuck, Jordan must have taken that wrong, because his shoulders went tense, and he looked like he was seconds from telling Stiles to get the fuck off his property.

“My mom,” Stiles said quickly and too loudly. “She died.”

At the very least, the statement seemed to have startled Jordan into not throwing him out.

Stiles scrambled to finish his explanation. “I know it’s not the same, but she… I grew up here, and I was still a kid when it happened. She was sick before. Like, she um...” But he couldn’t bring himself to go into the crazy factor, the embarrassing and erratic behavior that had ruled their lives for more than a year before she died. Stiles swallowed heavily. “The point is, it’s a small town, and everyone knew what happened. And all through middle school, I wasn’t really a person, you know? I was just that kid whose mom died. And I guess I – sorry, I’m probably saying this really badly.” Stiles rubbed at the back of his neck and looked at the ground between them.

Pumpkin took a couple of steps toward him and cocked his head to the side. Stiles smiled at him and reached out to pet the side of his nose. It felt easier to talk, looking at the dog while he said this. “I just know that it’s probably a really big deal for him, letting strangers in here to fish around in his family’s past. I don’t want to make that any more uncomfortable for him than it already is.”

When he looked up at Jordan, Stiles saw a soft, sad sort of smile on his face. It wasn’t the dazzling one he’d gotten before, but it was real, at least.

“So… please, just let him know that I appreciated the tour,” Stiles said. “And don’t tell him what fuckheads my undergrads are.”

Jordan laughed, his smile creeping closer to its full power. “I’ll make sure he knows.”

A big, furry head butted into Stiles’s stomach, then, reminding him that he’d stopped petting. Stiles rubbed both hands into the thick fur behind Pumpkin’s ears. “Oh, and make sure Pumpkin knows what a good boy he is!” he praised, falling into his gooiest ‘yay, puppy!’ voice. “Yes, you are. I’m pretty sure Tracy wants to kidnap you and take you home.”

“Alright, Pumpkin,” Jordan snickered. “I think we better head back inside before you get stolen, then.” He took a few steps back. “Thank you, Stiles.” The look on his face was so genuine, nearly _affectionate_ , that Stiles felt himself blushing.

He stared after as Jordan and Pumpkin walked back up to the house.

Well, fuck.

* * *

  
  


In his younger and less jaded years, Stiles believed there was a certain period of time, post-orgasm, when the body chemically shielded a person from all negative emotions. Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes of an unimpeachably pleasant haze. It was one of those biological imperative things, he’d figured, to keep people fucking one another, no matter how bad an idea it might be. Since he and Theo had broken up, though, he’d found that the post-coital bliss period shrank significantly with each inadvisable lay.

This time, he got less than a minute before the regret and self-loathing set in.

“Eugh. Got come on your keyboard,” Theo said, prodding a glob of it off the ‘M’ key. “Good luck explaining that one to IT.”

“Jesus,” Stiles muttered, hastily buttoning his pants back up. He grabbed a wad of tissues and shoved Theo aside to mop up the mess. “Do you do this on purpose? Always find the most inconvenient place to shoot off?”

Theo sat in the desk chair, arms crossed over his bare chest. Stiles really wanted him to put his fucking shirt on, but Theo _knew_ his muscles did it for Stiles. “I’m not the one that keeps shooting down hookups at one of our apartments,” he grumbled, glancing around Stiles’s tiny office with disdain. He put his feet up on the desk, and Stiles immediately knocked them back off. Theo leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You could just come over to my place next time.”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “There isn’t going to _be_ a next time,” he snapped. “We can’t keep doing this, and you can’t keep coming around. We’re _done_ , Theo.”

He received a very slow, judgmental once-over in response. “Yeah, you look real done to me.”

Okay, fine, Stiles probably looked thoroughly fucked out. Messy hair, swollen lips, probably a couple of hickeys because Theo was an _asshole_. He snatched Theo’s shirt off the floor and threw it at him. “Get dressed. Get out.”

Theo rolled his eyes, but he put the shirt on and went for the door, a little hitch in his step that sent a twinge of misplaced guilt through Stiles’s chest. Then Theo opened the door to reveal Hayden, her fist raised as if she was about to knock.

“Oh,” she said, blinking at Theo. She looked past him at Stiles, taking in his appearance and probably the stink in the room. “ _Oh_.”

“See you later,” Theo called over his shoulder on his way out.

Hayden waited until he was around the corner of the hallway before stepping inside and saying, “Uh, is that your boyfriend?”

“No,” Stiles said, too quickly. He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “The cheating scumbag _ex_ -boyfriend,” he explained.

She cringed and looked back in the direction that Theo had gone. “Oof,” she said, which Stiles was pretty sure was Zennial for ‘ _Wow, your life is a big fucking trainwreck_.’

“Did you need something?” he asked.

“Oh!” Hayden headed for his desk. Stiles, remembering the poorly cleaned mess he’d just made of it, stepped between her and it to intercept. She held out a few sheets of paper. “I got the results on the plant samples we took.”

Stiles glanced over the species listed to see if he recognized anything. _Plantago erecta, Oxalis oregana, Woodwardia fimbriata, Vitis californica_. They didn’t mean much to him. “Uh,” he said.

“Most of them are common wild plants,” she explained, pointing at lines as she listed, “ferns, wild grape, ground cover… but there are a few non-native plants that are more interesting. _Aconitum napellus_ – wolf’s bane or monkshood – is a poison. So are a few others if used in great enough quantities, but apparently henbane and mandrake were also used in traditional medicines. There’s no reason they would be growing in this region unless someone had brought them here, though.”

The Theo-funk vanished from Stiles’s mind almost immediately. “That’s awesome. So maybe they were growing their own medicine out there?”

“That or practicing witchcraft,” Hayden joked.

“God, I wish. Wouldn’t that be the discovery of the century? Beacon Hills was founded by witches?”

She snorted. “You’ll have to pull Tracy in for that one. Folklore is her area of expertise.”

Stiles was going to do just that. He held up the papers and smiled at Hayden. “Thanks for running the samples for us. This is really amazing.”

“Sure thing. I’ll see you Thursday.” Hayden turned, but stopped just short of the doorway. She glanced back at him. “Stiles?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s probably not my place to say, but… stop screwing your ex.”

Stiles felt a flush rising in his cheeks. He waved and called, too loudly, “Bye! See you Thursday!”

* * *

  
  


“Human remains,” Stiles called across the auditorium. He clicked for the next slide, which showed an excavation of skeletons. “Material remains.” A picture of broken pottery appeared on the screen, then a photo of a small jawbone alongside a measuring tape. “Animal and plant remains.” He set the clicker down on the podium and looked out at the students.

There were more than he had ever taught to at one time before. Intro to Archaeology had been added as a humanities core requirement option, so a lot of the students were only there because they had to be. Still, there were a decent number toward the front who looked interested and attentive.

“These are the sorts of items people think about when they think excavation – the show pieces, right? The goal of the whole thing. But these items on their own can’t give us a whole lot of information. The majority of our data is going to come from the find site. Who can tell me what we look for?”

A hand went up toward the front of the class. “Stratigraphy?” a nervous-sounding girl answered.

“Great,” Stiles agreed. His phone buzzed in his pocket once. “And what does that tell us?”

“Um.” She fidgeted with her pen and didn’t make eye contact. Prime archaeologist material he’d ever seen it. “It can help to figure out how old something is, based on how far down it is?”

He nodded encouragingly even though she wasn’t looking. “Yeah, exactly. Can anyone remember from the reading what the rule for that is?”

A more confident-looking girl in the middle of the room raised her hand and began speaking before Stiles even called on her. “The Law of Superposition,” she said, “which states that the oldest layer of soil is at the base, the farthest down, and every layer up is progressively newer.” She would go anthropology for sure, Stiles thought.

“Correct.” His phone buzzed again. Stiles took it out of his pocket and slipped it between himself and the podium so he could set it on silent, glancing down at it quickly, then back up at the class. “Okay, what other clues can we take from a find site?”

He called on a guy this time, another front-row kid. “Proximity – how close it is to other artifacts.”

“Good one,” Stiles agreed. He set his phone on the podium, now on silent. “What else?” No one else raised their hands. He looked around the room and saw most people trying to avoid his gaze. “Come on, you can glance in the book if you need to. Someone give me something to work with here.” He glanced at his phone screen while he waited, opening his messenger. He had two texts from Jordan.

“Um,” said a student in the middle – Stiles didn’t think she had talked in class yet and nodded at her. “Soil matrix? The composition and isotopes and stuff?”

“Isotopes and _stuff_ ,” he echoed, and when she looked slightly embarrassed, he rushed to add, “That’s a really good one. We can do way more with soil composition than they could do back in the day. We can use decay rates for radioactive elements, known global distribution and contamination of certain elements – even tracking flood patterns and sea levels from soil compositions.” The new-talker seemed appeased. “Anyone else?”

_From Jordan: Hey, just looked at the weather report for this weekend. Looks like heavy rain.  
From Jordan: Are you still planning to come out here?_

Stiles’s immediate, paranoid reaction was to think that Jordan was trying to find an excuse to tell Stiles _not_ to come, but he knew well enough how to recognize and ignore insecure self-talk.

“Geofacts?” asked a boy from the third row. That was a good compromise row, Stiles thought – for when you wanted to look interested but not like a try-hard. “Like, landscape formations?”

“Uh, yeah, that fits in with our soil matrix to some extent,” Stiles explained, trying not to shut the kid down. “Basically, if there are any specific geological formations, that can tell us some things about the environment at the time the artifact was buried.” He realized he’d lost track of how many answers the class had given and turned off his phone screen. “So, the big one we’re missing is just the general geography of the find site – where did we find the artifact? So on this next slide we have an example of some Roman marble busts...”

* * *

  
  


Stiles started typing out a reply the second class was dismissed.

 _To Jordan:_ _Yep! Rain or shine_

Then, because he was still a little paranoid that Jordan maybe didn’t want him there, he went for a bit of humor, too:

_To Jordan: The great thing about hiring undergrads is they never ask for hazard pay_

The reply appeared just a few seconds later.

_From Jordan: Rough. I might have to convince them to unionize._

Stiles grinned, dropping into the chair near the podium.

_To Jordan: Betrayal! I thought we were friends :(  
From Jordan: Hm and I guess if they unionize I can’t get my…  
From Jordan: What was it you said?  
From Jordan: Shirtless college boys excavation team?_

Stiles’s face flushed so fast it was actually uncomfortable. He gaped at his phone. Was Jordan _flirting_ with him? No way. No, Jordan was married! The most married! To a really weird but hot dude.

The next lecturer walked in while he was still trying to come up with a response. Stiles got up, grabbed his bag, and scurried out of the room while still staring at his phone in confusion. Did he flirt back? Was it harmless? Or was this an automatic hell sort of situation?

When in doubt, he went for his external moral compass.

_To Scott: Is it wrong to flirt back if a married dude flirts with you_

As he turned toward the stairwell, another message popped up on the screen:

_From Jordan: Sorry, I was just teasing._

Another:

_From Scott: Yes  
To Scott: OK just checking_

He tripped on the first step as he switched over:

_To Jordan: Hey if ppl don’t throw my inappropriate comments back in my face how will I learn_

_From Scott: The guy that lives on the Hale property? Do we need a crisis intervention call?_

_To Jordan: No he’s really hot but I’m being professional_

Wait.

Stiles stumbled to a stop in the middle of the stairwell, staring at his phone in horror.

“No,” he murmured, poking his finger at the evil little text bubble as if he might be able to delete it through sheer willpower. “Nonononono...”

_From Jordan: Guessing that wasn’t for me_

This was it. After years of trying, Stiles was finally going to actually die of embarrassment. His hands shook as he typed back,

_To Jordan: Omg I am so sory  
To Jordan: *sorry_

Stiles shoved his phone in his pocket and focused on not hyperventilating as he made his way back up to his office. Fuck. Fuck, what was the _matter_ with him? When he finally got through the door, it was to the sight of his disheveled office and the memory that he’d gone and fucked Theo _again_ , that he was a mess and a maker of the absolute worst choices. Like, all the time. If there was an award for worst choices made, Stiles would win every year.

He sat down in his chair with a groan and pulled his phone out again. He had another text.

_From Jordan: For the record, you’re not THAT professional._

Stiles made a truly pathetic whining noise and dragged a hand over his face. He very deliberately switched over to his text conversation with Scott before typing:

_To Scott: We DEFINITELY need a crisis intervention call_

* * *

  
  


Stiles had never claimed to be a courageous sort of person. If pressed, he might even cop to being a terrible, terrible coward. And it was in that spirit that he dropped the undergrads off at the Hale property Thursday afternoon, then immediately drove away under the excuse that he hadn’t gotten a chance to buy their camp food before they left Davis. If Jordan stopped by, he figured, it would probably be soon after they arrived, and Stiles would hopefully sneak in after that.

The rain wasn’t supposed to start until the next day. The sun wouldn’t set until around seven. The town of Beacon Hills spread out ahead of him in warm afternoon sunlight that reflected proudly off the yellow brick facades of the main shopping center. Stiles parked the Jeep in front of the local grocer’s – the Stilinskis would starve before they caved to the new chain mega-store up the road – and headed inside.

He was weighing the deliciousness merits of chunky peanut butter against the universal acceptability of smooth when a familiar female voice behind him said, “Tell me you don’t live off that.”

Stiles spun and found himself under the supremely judgmental stare of one Lydia Martin. She wore jeans and a dark green blouse, knotted below her navel, and had a shopping cart in front of her, mostly fresh produce and dry goods.

Her eyes flicked down to his basket purposefully.

So far, he’d picked up a few packaged soups, granola bars, and a bag of potatoes. Stiles frowned at his basket, then haltingly explained, “Oh, uh, camping. We’re, um. I’m doing an excavation nearby.”

“Excavation,” Lydia repeated.

“Uh, archaeological,” Stiles said. “I’m an archaeologist now. Well, I’m getting my PhD. In archaeology. Urban archaeology, so we’re, um, y’know, not looking for the American Pompeii or anything like that.”

Her features smoothed, apparently satisfied with that answer. “Interesting. How close are you to completing the PhD?” She turned and started walking down the aisle without so much as a glance back to see if Stiles would follow.

Stiles snatched a jar of chunky off the shelf, then scrambled after her. “Uh, I’m hoping for spring, but it’ll probably be next winter, realistically. It depends on what we turn up in the dig.”

Lydia stopped to examine some small, fancy-looking bags of bread flour. “Are you planning to stay in academia, then?” she supposed.

“I’ll probably apply with some museums, too,” he explained. There were some bags of trail mix not too far off, by the nuts and dried fruits.

“Well, good luck with that,” she said, eyes fixed on the back of a flour bag.

Stiles hesitated, not sure if they were shopping together now or if he should just thank her and hope they didn’t keep awkwardly bumping into one another in every aisle. He settled on, “Hey, I heard about your mom.”

Her eyes snapped up to his. A little muscle in her jaw twitched.

“I’m really sorry,” he offered, wondering if he should have avoided the topic entirely. He was in it now, Stiles supposed.. “How’s she doing?”

Lydia let out a long breath, dropping the flour into her cart. “Aside from the hair loss, nausea, body aches, and sleeping seventeen hours a day, she’s doing just great,” she said in a clipped tone.

Stiles winced. “That sucks.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, lips pressed together in a thin line as she continued on down the aisle. Her eyes scanned over the shelves, but apparently she didn’t need anything here. They rounded the corner to the next aisle before she added, “The doctors say it’s working, though. Her chances are good.”

“That’s good.” Stiles rubbed at the back of his neck and went for the instant oatmeal packets. “Well, if you need any tips on how to wrangle the hospital vending machines, I probably still remember the tricks,” he offered.

A soft laugh slipped from Lydia’s lips. “I’m pretty sure they’ve updated them since you were last plaguing the halls of Beacon Memorial. They’re the type that take credit cards now.”

“Huh.” For some reason, it felt strange, almost sacrilege to imagine the hospital with anything other than the ancient, ugly, perpetually-broken vending machines that he remembered. “Well, then I guess I don’t have any useful skills to offer you.”

“Unless I need to dig up some old history.” She smiled at him, but the expression looked so tired, Stiles could hardly stand to look at it. Lydia looked so much like she had back in high school, had hardly changed at all appearance-wise. But there was something haunted in her eyes that threatened to reach back through time and taint his every memory of what she had been before.

Stiles nodded, not sure what else to say. “Well, I’ll, um. I’ll see you around, probably.”

Lydia hummed a vague agreement and continued on toward the canned food aisle.

He’d been planning to get them canned fruit. He decided against it.

* * *

  
  


Friday greeted them with a gray sky and an unseasonable chill as the wind blew in the rain they were expecting. “God, is this what it’s going to be like all November?” Mason griped, crouched next to the fire while he ate his oatmeal.

“Once it starts getting really cold, we’ll switch to analytical,” Stiles assured them. “We can’t dig if the ground freezes anyway.”

Tracy poured herself a second cup of coffee, eyes still a bit glazed over.

Hayden dropped down to sit next to Stiles, her own coffee in hand. “Jordan said they have some tarps and stuff,” she mentioned. “When he stopped by yesterday. He said to let them know if we need to borrow any.”

Stiles looked toward their sizable pile of tarps, stacked next to the sample collection tent. He raised an eyebrow at her. “Did you tell him we were set?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “He insisted I pass the message along.”

God, what did that _mean_? Stiles rubbed a hand over his face.

“Stiles,” Mason called from the other side of the fire.

“Hm?”

Mason yawned. “Don’t fuck a married man,” he said.

“ _What_?” Stiles sputtered.

“Don’t do it,” he said. “It’s a bad idea.”

Tracy chimed in, “His husband looked like he could kill someone.”

“See?” Mason said. “Bad idea.”

Stiles couldn’t decide which of them he wanted to glare at more.

Hayden said, “He’s fucking his ex that cheated on him,” and Stiles decided – _her_ . He definitely wanted to glare at _her_ the most. “I think Stiles likes bad ideas.”

“You – you are _all_ a bunch of… of…” Stiles stammered, then exploded, “You are my _employees_ , you ass munches!”

None of them looked particularly impressed by this observation.

Mason gave an exaggerated and judgmental frown as he shook his head. “Just don’t do it.”

* * *

  
  


Jordan came out to the greenhouse later in the morning, but Stiles had thankfully just made a run to camp. He spotted Jordan before he got too close and ducked behind a tree. He watched through the trees and thin drizzle until Jordan finally glanced around the woods, then headed back to the house.

About an hour later, Stiles was using his body to shield soil samples from the rain while he tried to write on the labels. Then crunching leaves drew his attention back to the main path. He braced himself for the inevitable mortification that would come when he saw Jordan again. Instead, it was Derek standing there in a green rain slicker. The Great Dane was standing just behind him.

“Oh my gosh, that’s even bigger than the other one,” Tracy declared, carefully stepping out and away from her grid square. She hesitated, probably at the glare-like tension on Derek’s face, then asked, “Is he friendly? Can I pet him?”

Derek nodded and stepped to the side, gesturing the dog forward.

Mason went over, too, and they let the dog smell their hands before petting him.

“What’s his name?” Mason asked.

For a moment, Stiles thought Derek wouldn’t be able to conjure a verbal answer at all. Then, quietly, he managed to fumble out, “Louis.”

Tracy looked up at him, her hand stilling. Her brow furrowed. “Louis?” she asked, as if she must have misheard. It was a weird-ass name for a dog, Stiles had to agree. He brushed the dirt off his knees and got up to join them. Hayden, still apparently not a dog person, hung back.

Derek flushed and nodded. He was starting to look more anxious. He turned toward Stiles with an expression that, on anyone else, would look like a ferocious death glare. Stiles thought, on Derek, it meant ‘save me.’

“Uh, you need something, Derek?” Stiles asked.

Derek nodded again and turned back toward the path. Louis had pulled away from Mason and Tracy and returned to his side. He bumped Derek’s elbow with his nose.

“Alright, you guys keep working,” Stiles told them. “I’ll be right back.” He followed Derek and waited until they were out of earshot before asking, “So what’s up?”

“Jordan thinks you’re avoiding him,” Derek said.

And, okay, that was not what Stiles had expected. Fuck. He had no idea how Jordan had taken that stupid text, and he definitely had no idea what he’d told his _husband_ about the whole thing. It would be just his luck to say the wrong thing and end up causing some sort of marital dispute. “Um, did he…” Stiles ventured. “Did he tell you why…?”

“Because of the text you sent him,” Derek interrupted, rolling his eyes. They stopped at the edge of the backyard, near the shed. Louis stayed pressed against Derek’s side.

Stiles cringed. “Look, I’m _really_ embarrassed about that,” he said. “It was super inappropriate, and I swear I’m not, like, trying anything.” His words were picking up speed, aiming for a full-on nervous babble, and no one knew where the fuck that could lead, least of all Stiles. “It’s just I seem to have this weekly quota where I have to embarrass myself half to death at least once a week, and this is where it landed this week.”

Derek lifted an eyebrow at him.

“And really, if you think about it,” Stiles barreled on, because like hell if he wasn’t going to dig himself as deep into this hole as he could get, “it’s a good thing. Because if I didn’t have this horrible, mortifying personality, I mean, hoo boy! All of this?” Stiles gestured at his weird, lanky physique. “Irresistible, right? If it weren’t for the dumb shit that keeps coming out of my mouth, you average supermodel-looking dudes wouldn’t stand a chance.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “So. You’re welcome.”

The other eyebrow lifted. Then, after a beat, a noisy breath slipped from Derek’s mouth. Stiles might not have even identified it as a laugh if it wasn’t for the way it made Derek’s chest shake under his rain coat. It was such a small laugh, but Stiles got the sense that it was rare anyway. “You’re funny,” Derek told him, in case he might have misinterpreted the laughing.

“Hey, there’s another thing you gotta watch out for,” Stiles joked.

Derek ducked his head and peeked at Stiles from under the hood of his slicker. “I’m not mad at you,” he said, “and neither is Jordan.” He reached down to rub the top of Louis’s head, stroking down over the short, wet fur on his back. “And we tell each other everything, so don’t worry about that.”

Stiles let himself relax a little, nodding. “That’s good,” he commented. “Healthy.” They had a beautiful, loving, healthy marriage that absolutely did not need his horny-repressed nonsense invading it.

“We like you, Stiles,” Derek said.

Which… okay. Weird thing to say, but Stiles figured he could attribute that to Derek’s generally non-social, semi-verbal countenance. “Thanks,” he said slowly. “I… like you guys, too.” Then, figuring that required some elaboration, he added, “You’re very… nice. And forgiving when I say dumb shit.”

The rain started coming down a little harder, but Derek didn’t seem to notice. Louis shook, though, and stepped closer to Stiles.

“You don’t need to do that,” Derek said.

“Do what?”

Derek frowned at him. “Insult yourself all the time. You’re not… bad. Or. I mean.” He seemed to have noticed that he’d said too many words at once and stalled out.

Stiles slid a hand over Louis’s rain-slick ears and waited.

“You don’t need to be embarrassed,” Derek settled on. “You’re not as bad as you think you are.”

It was the first time in Stiles’s entire life that someone had told him something like that. He honestly didn’t know how to respond. Louis nudged his nose against Stiles’s hand and he realized he’d stopped petting.

Derek took a few steps closer, and the proximity made Stiles’s pulse rise in a way he hadn’t fully anticipated. Derek placed on hand on Louis’s back, then wrapped the other around the back of Stiles’s elbow and squeezed. It was an odd, vaguely affectionate little gesture. Stiles had no idea what it meant. “Anyway, you don’t need to avoid us,” he advised.

“Okay,” Stiles agreed, voice coming out too quiet under the pattering of rain on their coats. “I won’t.”

* * *

  
  


By the time they finished up for the day, the rain had come on in earnest. There was no way to get a fire started, so they huddled, damp and miserable, in the sample collection tent. It was barely big enough for the four of them to all have camp chairs inside, but the ground was too wet to sit on, so they crammed them inside and sat knee-to-knee while they ate peanut butter sandwiches and apples.

“God, the water’s coming in the door,” Hayden groaned, pointing at the door flap. Sure enough, there were thin streams of water sliding underneath. “What if we get a flood?”

Stiles groaned. “If it floods… shit, we can’t drive all the way back in this. I could take you to my dad’s, I guess? There aren’t enough beds, but it’s not like we weren’t planning to sleep on the ground tonight anyway.”

“This _sucks_ ,” Mason muttered into his sandwich.

“We’re not going to be able to get a fire going in the morning,” Tracy pointed out. “We’ll have to drive out for coffee. I need coffee.”

Hayden snorted. “Yeah, _no one_ wants you to not have coffee, Tracy. You’re terrifying in the morning.”

Stiles pulled out his phone and looked up the weather. There was nothing about flooding, but there was a severe storm warning that was supposed to continue until noon the next day. “Shit,” he mumbled.

Between the howling wind and the thunder of rain against the side of the tent, they couldn’t hear anyone approaching the tent. It was a sudden surprise, then, when the door flap pulled open and a drenched figure in a bright red orange poncho stepped inside. Once the door was secured again, the hood lowered to reveal Jordan’s sodden face. With the close quarters in the tent, he had to stand squashed between the tent wall and the side of Mason’s chair.

“Hey, you guys can’t stay out here in this,” he said. “This is crazy.”

“We might go to my dad’s,” Stiles offered.

Jordan shook his head. “Don’t be silly. Stay in the house tonight. There’s plenty of space.”

“Really?” Hayden blurted, and already Tracy was saying, “Oh my gosh, thank you!” before Stiles could even get in his token rejection.

“You guys don’t have to do that,” he said.

“I insist,” Jordan told him firmly. “The last thing we need is one of you getting struck by lightning or crushed by a tree branch or something. Go on and grab your stuff.”

* * *

  
  


By the time they got to the house, they were all drenched, even with the protection of their raincoats. The rain came sideways, blew up under their hoods. It gathered in puddles across the paths, soaking into their socks and shoes, wicking up their pant legs. Jordan let them in the door at the back of the garage, where they all shed their rain gear and shoes, carefully rolling the cuffs of their soaked pants so they wouldn’t drip inside.

The garage door led through to the lower level of the house, next to a laundry room where Jordan invited them to bring their wet clothes once they’d gotten changed. “Did you get a chance to eat?” he asked as they passed the kitchen, and they all assured him they had. Across the open concept room, Stiles saw Pumpkin’s tail hanging over the arm of a the couch.

“Oh, god, that’s gonna be a nightmare,” Hayden declared, stepping forward to seize Tracy’s long braid in hand. It was soaked, tangled and matted to the point that the strands couldn’t be told one from the other. “I’ll help you comb that out later if you want.”

“How about some tea?” Jordan offered. “Something to warm up. I can make it while you get settled.”

“That sounds amazing,” Mason sighed.

Jordan made quick work of the tour. One bathroom on the main floor, then up to the second where there was another bathroom, Jordan and Derek’s room, and two spare bedrooms.

“Sorry, this one is kind of a construction zone,” as he held open the door to the smaller one. There was a full size bed on one end; on the other, a six foot ladder, boxes of construction supplies, wood boards, a circular saw. “The other room has a bigger bed, if anyone’s planning on sharing. There are only three extra rooms, but you’re free to use the couch, too.”

Hayden looped her arm through Tracy’s purposefully. “We can share.”

Mason took the smaller room downstairs, which left Stiles with the futon bed on the third floor. There were only two rooms on the floor: the sort of half-constructed sitting room with the futon and an uncomfortably empty room with a sliding door out onto a balcony.

It seemed like this was just way too much house for two people. They didn’t even have enough to fill all the rooms. Two unused beds. Maybe they had friends over sometimes, but somehow Stiles couldn’t picture Derek helping to host a dinner party. It felt more like they had built this big house in preparation for a family that hadn’t yet manifested.

Stiles changed and carried his clothes down to the laundry room. The others were already sitting at the kitchen table with mugs of tea steaming in front of them. Hayden was carefully working a comb through Tracy’s hair while Mason recounted a story about his little sister throwing a fit about getting caught in the rain after getting her hair done.

Jordan stood at the stove with a kettle of hot water and a mug. He’d changed into a pair of sweats and a olive green pullover hoodie. It felt like a too-intimate view of him. Jordan glanced over his shoulder. “No caffeine for you, right, Stiles?” he said with a grin that crinkled the corners of his eyes.

“Har har,” Stiles shot back.

“I’ve got mint, lavender, chamomile, and rooibos.”

“Mint sounds good,” Stiles said. He bypassed the table, going over to the kitchen counter. “Is Derek out in this storm?” he asked.

A little bit of hot water sloshed onto the counter as Jordan poured. “Shoot,” he murmured. “Um, no, he’s checking on the sump pump. We’ve been having some issues with it.”

“Where’s Louis?” Tracy asked. When Stiles looked over, he saw that Pumpkin had come over and had his head in her lap, her hands stroking over his ears.

“Probably with Derek,” Jordan answered quickly. “Those two are pretty inseparable.” He passed Stiles his mug of tea, then ushered him toward the table.

“I have to ask,” Hayden said. “Why do your dogs have such weird names?”

Tracy made a scandalized gasp and clasped her hands over Pumpkin’s ears. “Pumpkin isn’t a weird name!” she insisted. “It’s perfect.”

“We, uh, we didn’t name Louis,” Jordan said. “He was a rescue.” He carried his own mug to the end of the kitchen island and leaned against it, facing the table. The hoodie had the US Army logo on the front. And, great, now Stiles was thinking about him in uniform. “So did you find anything interesting today?” Jordan prompted.

They drank their tea. Tracy explained the importance of soil samples to the excavation process while Hayden worked on her hair and Mason asked questions and Stiles sat there, thinking about how Derek had said, ‘ _We like you, Stiles_ ,’ and what the hell it meant. What it almost certainly didn’t mean.

* * *

  
  


Stiles woke up not long after he dozed off. The futon was more comfortable than sleeping on the ground would have been, but being in a new place always made it hard to stay asleep. The ceiling of above him followed the slope of the roof on the sides, and the pounding of rain against the shingles echoed loudly through the room. The wind howled against the windows, and thunder rumbled in the distance. He sort of had to pee.

Figuring that was the distraction most easily dealt with, Stiles slipped out of bed and headed for the bathroom on the second floor. The house was dark, except for a crack of light from under Jordan and Derek’s bedroom door. He crept down the stairs and around the corner to the bathroom. He hadn’t even closed the door when he realized that he could hear voices through the wall.

“ _-would have felt bad with them staying out in the rain_ ,” came Derek’s soft rumble.

Stiles looked up and saw a heating vent at the top of the wall. That’s where the voices were coming through. It must have been open on both sides.

Jordan said, _“I didn’t ask if it was the right thing to do. I asked how you’re feeling about it.”_

“ _It’s fine.”_ A pause. Stiles stayed stock-still, hand on the doorknob and not daring to move. If he could hear them this easily, they’d be able to hear him moving around the bathroom, too. For a moment, he wondered if they had heard him anyway, and that’s why they’d shut up.

Then Jordan said, “ _What do you want to do about that?”_

“ _I’m… still thinking.”_

Jordan’s voice took on a playful curl. _“I might have an idea..._ ”

Then quiet.

Then the creak of a mattress.

A short, broken-off little whine.

Stiles felt his face go hot as he realized what was happening. Oh god. Oh fuck. That was… that was _really, really hot_ , but he should _so_ not be listening to it. If he were in a cartoon, there would be a little Devil Stiles and an Angel Stiles on his shoulders, debating the masturbatory potential of listening in versus the absolute, unquestionable moral depravity of such an act.

Before he could make a decision, Derek’s voice broke through the quiet in a soft, earnest little moan. “ _I love you. So much_.”

Whatever argument Devil Stiles had for him crumbled. This wasn’t a fantasy, he reminded himself. It was a marriage. A sweet, loving marriage between two very nice people.

Stiles closed the door, making sure it made a sound as the door connected with the frame.

**Author's Note:**

> I would love to hear from you in the comments! You can also come visit me at luulapants.tumblr.com.


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